Savagery
in Zimbabwe Worsens
NewsMax.com
Sunday, May 6, 2000
Terrorist seizures of white-owned farms have now spread to attacks on
opponents of President Robert Mugabe, now running as an underdog in his
re-election campaign – and observers say he’s behind the violence.
"The situation is exceedingly serious. Anyone's notion that there
can be free and fair elections is a joke," Tony Reeler, clinical
director at Amani Trust, an organization providing medical and legal help
to those under attack, told the Washington Times.
"There has been intimidation on such a massive scale, it is the
wrong term to speak of election violence," said Mr. Reeler, whose
independent group has created a database of the killings, farm burnings
and other violence raging across Zimbabwe.
"This is ... organized violence, strategic violence being
organized with the complicity and active participation of the state."
Journalists are also targets. Patrick Nyaruwata, secretary-general of a
war veterans association that had been deeply involved in the farm
seizures, has warned reporters against filing "false and biased"
stories.
"With immediate effect, if we hear any journalist saying we are
squatters, there is going to be war here. There will be severe
punishment," he said.
According to the Times, one South Africa-based reporter who
sought to speak to the occupiers of a commercial farm about 25 miles east
of Harare was interrogated, threatened with death and chased away last
Monday.
Two opponents of the Mugabe regime felt the wrath of pro-Mugabe
supporters when they were handcuffed and beaten with iron rods and paraded
in front of farm workers at a neighboring farm as an example of what
happens to opposition supporters.
Pro-government squatters showed them fresh graves and told them to dig
a pit for their own graves. They escaped that night by attacking a new
crew of guards with the iron rods and running into the bush. Both men were
severely bruised and one might have suffered a fractured hip, according to
a doctor with Amani Trust, the Times said.
A spokeswoman for the Commercial Farmers Union, representing white
farmers, told the paper that at least 30 new farms had been invaded
between Monday and Wednesday.
"There are massive wheat stoppages going on. That is the winter
crop that farmers are trying to prepare for now. Some of the invaders are
threatening the farmers and telling them to leave entirely. Other invaders
are telling farmers they can stay, but divide the land," the
spokeswoman said.
The Times quoted Learnmore Jongwe, a spokesman for the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, as accusing the
government of "a well-calculated strategy aimed at singling out the
MDC leadership at the local level and attacking and intimidating
them."
The newspaper also said that Matthew Pfebve, the brother of an MDC
parliamentary candidate in Bindura district, was beaten to death by a mob
of government supporters. His elderly parents also were severely beaten.
Attackers also firebombed the shop of Peter Karimakuenda, another MDC
parliamentary candidate, and burned huts at the homestead of an MDC
candidate in Gomomonzi, a local newspaper reported.
